Instrumental water magic. Goes in a straight line the way only crows and water can.

Base tracks were recorded in my tiny room at the Westgate before I got back into a real home. I added production touches and remixed everything on my PC at the lake house once I got properly settled in.

Water Magic

https://obsidianskyrecords.bandcamp.com/track/william
https://www.instagram.com/kenwohlrob/
https://www.facebook.com/obsidianskyrecords

Performed and produced by Ken Wohlrob
Recorded at Quatre Cagne, Mohegan Lake, NY
March and October 2025
Cover Image by Melissa Pracht
Obsidian Sky Records #012 © 2025

A song is a stubborn thing. It’ll resist you with all its might. As you try to bend it and twist it, it will reject your strokes of genius, leaving you feeling like a damn fool for thinking they would work in the first place. A song will tell you, in no uncertain terms, what it wants to be. Only a jackass would ignore it.

“William” was a confounding son of a bitch. I wanted it to be more. So I kept throwing different layers at it. But none of them worked. What was there was all it wanted. And the more I listened to it, the more it reminded me of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. Basisnki could’ve done so much more with those decaying tape loops. But he was confident enough as an artist to listen to what the music was telling him. It didn’t need more. There was such a journey in those slowly decaying repetitions. To smother them in other things would’ve dragged them down.

What I had was a single take of a repetitive guitar riff, played live through a reverse-echo feedback loop for 11 minutes. The feedback loop created oscillations and repetitions that took on a life of their own, extending past the riff, even re-absorbing it. There was a compelling journey in that single guitar line.

The soundscape is named after Basinski since he inspired the approach and after my father, who is also named William, because he’s had an interesting journey himself. Give it a spin and see where it takes you.

William

You can check out the album art, track notes and video at https://narion.xyz/music/signs-in-the-stars/

Sound stripped back to eight channels. Hat-tip to the pioneers, I wanted to explore dimensions of progression with fewer elements; extrapolating them in time and frequency. Hold on to the silence, morph the break, scatter the snares. 

Thanks for listening, I’d love to hear what you think, where you listen, where they take you.

signs in the stars

signs in the dub

Noisemaker. Guitarist for End of Hope (endofhope.bandcamp.com), Northern Heretic (northernheretic.bandcamp.com), and Eternal Black (R.I.P. -- eternalblack.bandcamp.com). Creator of un-ambient experiments (obsidianskyrecords.bandcamp.com). Bike rider. Salty dog.